A couple of us at Magenic have been spending some time looking into the new Xamarin.Forms technology.

It has some nice potential, but is clearly at the prototype stage more than the ready-for-use stage.

The good potential centers around the start of a XAML dialect they’ve created that describes common UI elements and concepts across iOS, Android, and Windows Phone 8 (Silverlight). Using this dialect you can’t get at all the features of each platform, but you can get at enough features to create standard data entry and data viewing forms like you’d need for a typical business application. And there’s always an easy escape hatch that allows you to build per-platform forms for when a common form just isn’t enough.

The bad points are areas I hope they’ll address soon so the technology becomes more useful for real work.

The first roadblock is the almost complete lack of documentation or samples showing how to use their XAML dialect. They have samples showing how to build forms in C#, but not in XAML. It reminds me of the first few months when Microsoft introduced XAML for WPF.

Perhaps it is because of the lack of XAML samples/docs, but it is a real struggle to figure out how to do things like async loading of data, full implementations of data binding against standard data binding types, etc.

I think this whole thing has potential. WPF was really rough when it was introduced, and eventually Microsoft improved the docs and samples and designer tools. And they eventually smoothed over the most egregious data binding issues, allowing the vast majority of existing .NET types to bind into WPF.

You can download the msi installer from the release page, or better yet add references to the framework via NuGet.

Version 4.5.600 includes support for iOS (via Xamarin) and for WinRT on Windows Phone 8.1 in the WinRT.Phone project. This also means you can use the new Universal solution/project type to build WinRT apps for Windows 8.1 and Windows Phone 8.1.

This prerelease also includes the new HttpProxy/Host and BrokeredProxy/Host data portal channels.

The Http data portal channel allows you to host the data portal server directly in ASP.NET MVC 4 or MVC 5 without the need for WCF. It relies only on the HttpClient library to invoke the server, so the client has no dependency on WCF - important for the new Windows Phone 8.1 programming model where WCF doesn't exist.

The Brokered data portal channel allows you to host the data portal server in .NET as a brokered assembly, thus available to a WinRT client app. This means you can build a WinRT app that makes data portal calls, where the "server-side" code is also running on the client device, but has access to full .NET. This will only work on Intel-based devices where full .NET assemblies can be deployed. It will only work with side-loaded apps, not apps from the Windows Store.

This is cool – Visual Studio Live! is coming to Washington D.C. this October.

This is the first time the conference has been in D.C. and I’m personally quite excited – not only by the chance to talk to a bunch of enthusiastic technologists from all over the world, but also because I’ll be in D.C. and can take a little time to see some of the monuments and museums.

What a great opportunity!

You can save $400 off the 5 day all-access Best Value Conference Package by registering here with priority code DCSPK17.

As per my previous post, I’ll also be speaking in Redmond this summer. So whether you attend in the summer on the west coast, or the fall on the east coast I look forward to seeing you!

I thought you might be interested to know that I’ll be speaking at Visual Studio Live!, August 18-22 in Redmond, WA http://bit.ly/RDSPK18 . Join us on this special journey to explore topics covering all-things WCF, ALM, Web Development, Data Management, Visual Studio and more!

I’ll be presenting the following sessions:

Leveraging Windows Azure websites What’s new in WinRT Development

SPECIAL OFFER: As a speaker, I can extend $500 savings on the 5-day package. Register here: http://bit.ly/RDSPK18Reg_ and use code RDSPK18

Learn how you can build better applications at Visual Studio Live! Redmond — bring the development issues that keep you up at night and prepare to leave this event with the answers, guidance and training you need. Register now: http://bit.ly/RDSPK18Reg_